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Thanks, yea the misconceptions about the overflow bothered me, but I didn't want to bother with it. Why try discussing it with experts that read something online about it, but never actually have seen one? My pump will 100% run dry before the tank overflows. And I'll be adding a float switch when I add an ATO. I've started and stopped the pump dozens and dozens of times with literally zero concern the siphon won't restart.

Both shrimp hanging out for a rare photo op. Interesting, I never saw my peppermint shrimp out since I added it. Then added the blood shrimp, now it comes out regularly. Might be nothing more than coincidence but cool to see.

Random update since I haven't in a while. Nothing too much to report. Lost a Bangaii cardinal a week or two ago. Not sure why, but it was rather large so may have just been old. All other fish are looking good.

Been battling some algae, a lot of algae actually. Did a big clean out the other day to remove a lot of it. I'm considering adding a Mexican turbo or two and an urchin to munch the rocks. Coral all doing ok. Had some zoas in one colony melt from one area as it expanded in another so not too worried about it. Same thing with the GSP. Growing well in all directions but part on the original plug died off. Weird. Biggest surprise was I had gone almost a month with no water change, but the parameters were all still looking very good. I guess with only 5 fish and a handful of corals it's not taxing the system much. Looking to add more corals on October and some fish around then too.

Bought an ATO, still need to hook it up. Also bought a flipper cleaner and dang, why did I not buy one sooner. Makes cleaning the glass so much easier, I actually do it frequently now haha. That's all for now. Hopefully some more interesting updates in a month or so.

Still got algae. Lots of it. So spent almost three hours today cleaning the tank. Hopefully I didn't go over board. Rocks are all just stacked, not attached. So figured I'd clean the rocks and epoxy them in place so they are stable for coral attachment.

Pulled the rocks one by one, put some H2O2 on them and scrubbed the algae away, avoiding contact with any corals. Let the rock sit a bit and then rinsed, put epoxy on and out the rocks back in.
Pulled off tons of algae and hopefully more will die off. Removed my filter sock I had in there which was long overdue. Not sure I'm a fan of socks, thinking I'm going to put something else in the sock section. We'll see.

Also ordered some grow light strips. I run gfo in a TLF reactor right now and I'm not a fan. When they come in I'm planning to attach a few to the outside of the reactor and run chaeto in it. Can't hurt to try.

There is a frag swap in CT, Fragtoberfest!, coming up in a couple weeks and I want the tank ready for a bunch more corals, but if the tank isn't ready idk how much I'll add. Well, that's all for now, corals mostly look real annoyed so I hope I didn't go too far overboard.

Well for now tank is looking much better, not algae free, but a lot less of it for sure. Lost my blood shrimp which was unfortunate, I like those shrimp. Pretty lame though, pistol shrimp was hiding under a rock I took out, it fell off the rock into one of the tubs I was cleaning rock in, swam around a little bit in mostly peroxide, was picked up in my hands and put back in the tank and it is still alive. Compared to that, the blood shrimp is a wimp for dying, of what IDK really. Still waiting on the lights to start the reactor up.

Just some quick cell phone pics. Went to CTARS' Fragtoberfest last weekend and picked up a bunch of nice corals, and a clam! They've been acclimating on the sand bed since and I attached them all today. Did a big 20 gallon water change first. Most are already out and happy in their new homes.

Ring of fires

Sunny D's

Gobstoppers

Red dragon acro

And my clam

Not pictured is my leptoseris as it isn't happy and my branching monti, can't get a good pic of it.

Still have a lot of algae, and some weird stuff I can't ID but my lights should be here soon to start the chaeto reactor. Also finally installed the Tunze nano ATO I've had for a few months. Already loving it.

Quick update. Tinkering around with the tank today. Last water change was two weeks ago. Tested the water today and all looks pretty good. Kh: 7.7, Ca: 445, Mg: 1335, NO3: 2? Maybe idk it's hard to read the salifert test haha, and PO4 undetected. But I am getting a bunch of algae still. Pulled out the biggest chunks to add to my latest project. Got a 5 foot strip of white LEDs in today and turned the TLF phosban reactor into an algae reactor. Growing green hair algae for now but I may look to swap that for Chaeto which would probably grow and do better. Any thoughts?

And figured out last night why my clam wasn't looking so great. Seems I have pyramid snails. So now it is in QT as I will be manually cleaning it for a while. Yay.... I was considering adding a Melanurus wrasse to the tank, might go get one today and add it to the QT.

Clam didn't make it. I think that is due to both the pyramid snails and my mishandling of it when moving it to the QT. I kept it under water but didn't hold the rock rubble it was attached to as I cleaned it of snails and the rocks fell off. I think that hurt the foot and with the clam already weak that was that. I feel terrible, should have done better, but live and learn I guess. Going a few months without a clam for now but absolutely will be trying again in the future.

So doing a little testing of a product. I'm not one to add all sorts of random stuff to the tank, but the algae and what not is a little out of control. So trying Vibrant aquarium cleaner from Underwater Creations. I've read a lot of good things so I'm giving it a shot. Doing an aggressive two dose weekly.
Before:

The vibrant is working for you? It wouldn't work at all for me. Not sure why. I was treating my 72 bow as a 100g and was dosing as such. I did dosing weekly tho rather than twice a week. I've moved on to vodka dosing now to try and combat my cyano and gha

The vibrant is working for you? It wouldn't work at all for me. Not sure why. I was treating my 72 bow as a 100g and was dosing as such. I did dosing weekly tho rather than twice a week. I've moved on to vodka dosing now to try and combat my cyano and gha

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Quick comparison shot. I have done nothing but dosed twice so too early to say success but the thick wavy algae on the left side of this rock is way receded.

Nice. Glad it's working for ya. Wish it worked for me, but already in the vodka dosing and designing a recirculating biopellet reactor for myself. I think tomorrow I'm going to bomb my tank with chemiclean also. We'll see how that goes.

Nice. Glad it's working for ya. Wish it worked for me, but already in the vodka dosing and designing a recirculating biopellet reactor for myself. I think tomorrow I'm going to bomb my tank with chemiclean also. We'll see how that goes.

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Cool good luck. You were having some nitrate issues right? Might have been just too much food for the algae for Vibrant to overcome. Who knows. Found your diy reactor, I'll follow along, diy projects are always cool.

Quick update on the tank inhabitants. Added a pair of wrasses and they seem to be settling in well. Melanurus wrasse and a blue and red fairy wrasse. The fairy tends to stay in the rocks but is starting to swim around more.

Yea Nitrate hit me out of nowhere. It spiked to 80ppm and my phosphate was staying below .5ppm. As of now nitrates are sitting at 40ppm but there's so much cyano plus the hair algae is coated in cyano so I'm pretty sure the readings are way off due to this. At this point I just need to do a full flush with chemiclean. I've already tackled what I assume to be the nitrate/phosphate issue which was from overfeeding. But we'll see what happens after the chemiclean.

New project started rolling today. My plan for this tank originally was to build it with a big fuge to support pods to keep a mandarin. Got cold feet about it and didn't even end up incorporating a fuge into the build. Naturally, the wife came with me to my LFS and wanted a mandarin. And so here we are.
Top three tanks just got seeded with the 5280 mix of pods from Algae Barn, green from some phytoplankton. Three tanks in the middle will be for more pods, need a bigger air pump first, 30+ gallons of water in all. Bottom shelf will be for growing phyto, once my order of nanno and tet come in from Florida aquaculture.

Tank has really cleared up. Got some Chaeto, so the reactor is running again. Bumped the lighting intensity up, haven't been seeing great growth from some of the corals, so wanted to see if more intense lightning helps. Zoas are looking good though.

Pods really starting to take off in the three tanks running. Starting to see them swimming all over and on the sides. Next phase started a little later than planned, but phyto is in and growing. Went with nanno and tet.